St Albans School is situated adjacent to the historic Abbey in the city of St Albans. It can trace its roots back to an original foundation in 948 AD by Abbot Wulsin, and was originally sited in the Abbey buildings.

By the beginning of the twelfth Century the school's reputation was sufficient that around 1100 the Norman scholar Geoffrey de Gorham applied for the post of Master. He later became Abbot of St Albans, and the posts of Master and Abbot were joined until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

In 1549 by a private Act of Parliament, the last Abbot was granted the right to establish a Grammar School which was subsequently maintained by the Mayor and burgesses of the city, and in 1570 Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and then living at Gorhambury, put the financing of the School on a firmer footing through a Wine Charter. The school was located by this time in the Lady Chapel of the Abbey.

In 1871 the school moved out of the Lady Chapel and into the former Abbey Gateway, a building which remains part of the school to this day. As it expanded, new buildings were added, the headmasterships of E Montagu-Jones and W T Marsh seeing rapid development, continued under F I Kilvington and carried on to this day by Andrew Grant.

There is a fine Victorian hall, a gymnasium and lower school block built on the site of a converted hat factory which had previously served as part of the school, a well-equipped science block and a technical centre.

For most of its life it was a single-sex school, although girls have been admitted in the sixth form for some years (the school says 1991, but there were girls in the sixth during the 1980s). Since the end of Direct Grant in 1975 the school has been fully independent.

Old Albanians will recall the weekly trek through Roman Verulamium to the King Harry playing fields, leased from the Earl of Verulam (a descendent of Bacon), but these are to be replaced by new pitches at Cheapside Farm, a 400 acre site purchased by the school in 1991.

The School's associations with the Abbey live on, with regular services in the main nave - one fringe benefit being the opportunity to listen to voluntaries played on the fine Harrison organ used in the Organ Festival competitions.